Marlon’s in jail and Leroy wants to try salt beef
Mühsam family gave me the telephone number in the United States of someone he thought might be Esra’s wife. I rang the number and left a message on the answering machine giving my name and saying that I was looking for a relation, Esra Bennathan.
The following day his wife Judith Nowak returned my call: “Don’t worry, Emily, I can tell you that Esra is very much alive and looking forward to talking to you.” It was an unforgettable moment.
I spoke to Esra on the phone and was lucky enough to meet him on two occasions in London in January 2015 before he died the following year. At 91, he was a tiny man, impeccably dressed in a grey suit and red bow tie, large glasses over a prominent nose, his bird-like brown eyes reminding me of my grandmother.
Born in Berlin, Esra was sent by his mother Ilse to live in Palestine with his father, from whom she was divorced, in 1936 due to rising discrimination against Jews in Germany. Esra served in the British army in the war and afterwards Esra and his son were the only Jews left in the family came to England to study economics at Birmingham University. His distinguished career included posts at Cambridge and Bristol universities, the UN and the World Bank.
Esra was able to tell me of the tragic fates of Aunt Agnes, who died in Thereseinstadt camp, and Hans who survived hard labour in Neuengamme only to be accidentally bombed by the British as the Nazis evacuated the prisoners on ships just days before the end of the war. His aunt Lieselotte (my grandmother’s first cousin) had committed suicide on the French border as she was being deported into German hands by the Spanish authorities from Barcelona, where she had been working as a doctor for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Only his mother Ilse had miraculously survived in the Budapest ghetto where she was living with her second husband, a Hungarian Jew.
I was deeply moved listening to Esra, hating myself for asking him questions that made him recall and relive these horrifying events. “I and my son Joel are the only Jews left in the Nelke family. The Jewishness has been washed out of them,” he told me, referring to the conversions to Christianity in other branches of the family.
I’ve often wondered why my father never talked about our Jewish relations. It wasn’t prejudice because he talked with immense pride about his mother’s Jewish ancestry.
My only explanation is that it was a taboo subject, considered too appalling to share with one’s children.
My German Jewish relatives are often in my thoughts these days as the world closes its doors on refugees, often young children, fleeing war and other horrors. I see parallels with the 1930s. I am convinced of the importance of recording the facts and keeping memory alive to try and make sure that events such as the Holocaust never occur again.
A Constant Heart: the War Diaries of Maud Russell (1938-1945), edited by Emily Russell is published by Dovecote Press. MONDAY AT BREAKFAST
GOOD MORNING Carter, it’s good to be back, where’s Marlon?” The two breakfast waiters have been the hotel’s double act ever since I started coming to Jamaica for some winter sunshine and crystal blue water ten years ago, “Marlon? Oh, he’s in prison man.” “In prison!? What for!?” “Murder, man!” “Murder!? Marlon murdered someone!?”
“He got himself into a little fight, man.”
“A little fight? What happened? ““He slashed a guy, man.”
“WHAT !? Marlon? Marlon the waiter? My breakfast waiter, Marlon? Our Marlon? That Marlon? He murdered someone!?”
“Yes, man. Marlon the waiter is Marlon the murderer.” “When did he do it?”
“Do what, man?”
“When did he murder the guy ?” “He killed him five years ago, man”
“Five years ago!? I’ve been coming here every year for the last ten years but I can’t remember him ever saying as he poured the coffee ‘By the way Mr. Rosengard did I tell you that I murdered someone?’” “He was on bail, man.”
“On bail for five years !?”
“The wheels of justice, they grind slow in Jamaica, man.’
“But Marlon was such a nice, quiet, gentle, smiling, peaceful guy.”
“Yes Marlon was a nice quiet gentle smiling peaceful guy —but he got provoked, man.”
“How long did he get?”
“He just got life!”
“Life!?”
“Don’t worry, man, he’ll be out in fifteen years.”
“Oh, that’s OK then. Wait a minute! How was he able to still keep working here as a waiter all the time he was on bail for murder?”
“The old manager knew, but I think when he left he just forgot to tell the new guy. You got to understand, Marlon never murdered anyone before — just this one guy, one time — and he was a good waiter.
TUESDAY
My next door neighbour on the beach, Marsha from Boston, comes over after breakfast and tells me about a phone call she got this morning from her six- year-old granddaughter about Trump.
“She said ‘Grandma I think ‘the wall’ is a really good idea — because when they build it all the way round the White House— he won’t be able to get out and make trouble!’” WEDNESDAY AFTER DINNER
When the band had finished playing the Beany Man classic Pump it Up! (‘Di handle pop off.. but mi pump it up back’) I went to the library and began reading the Jamaica phone directory. I counted 60 Cohens and 223 Levys.
I borrowed a book on Mindfulness and started reading the chapter on how to be a giver and not a taker. The next morning it had disappeared — some one had come onto my verandah and taken it .
THURSDAY
Carter who is also a singer songwriter sang me his latest composition at breakfast. "I recorded it in the studios down the road, man!”
I had an idea — why didn’t I do an audio recording of my own recently published book? Who needs Stephen Fry anyway?
I rang the studios. “What are you man? Reggae or dancehall?” the guy on the phone asked. “Something in between,” I said. I spent the next seven days of my holiday in Jamaica squeezed into a very hot tiny glass box, with a microphone .
Leroy the deadlocked rasta producer at first didn’t seem very interested in my reading of The Adventures of a Life Insurance Salesman; he was either on his phone or asleep, even though I’d begun it with the words “I became a life insurance salesman for the beautiful women…the glamour…the excitement…the women who’d stop at nothing to buy life insurance…it’s a very well kept secret.” But he certainly perked up when I got to the chapter about how I’d once sold life insurance to a Mafia hit man.
“No,he didn’t disclose it Leroy! On the application form he said he was a wine bar proprietor from Surbiton.”
After five hours a day for a week in the box I finally got to The End and had lost 14 pounds. It was better than being at a health farm for a week — and a lot cheaper.
And Leroy — who on the second day had started laughing at my stories — asked me how he could get barmitzvahed (or was it “get barmitzvah presents?”), was downloading Curb your Enthusiasm and instead of his usual jerk chicken and pork, rice and peas went off in search of bagels and salt beef sandwiches.
Rosengard on holiday